It's not an either-or situation, but if I had to choose one White House deal to scuttle, it'd have to be the US-India nuke deal instead of the US-UAE port deal.
Why?
If the immensely unpopular port deal goes through, it'll make it easier for Dems to retake Congress, where they can quickly pass some comprehensive port security legislation and at least mitigate the risks of foreign government control of our ports. Whereas the nuke deal severely weakens the international effort to stop nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and Asia, and that damage is not as easily undone.
The Carnegie Endowment's Joseph Cirincione provided the big-picture analysis, first describing the true nature of deal:
To clinch a nuclear weapons deal, [Bush] had to give in to demands from the Indian nuclear lobby to exempt large portions of the country's nuclear infrastructure from international inspection.
With details of the deal still under wraps, it appears that at least one-third of current and planned Indian reactors would be exempt from [International Atomic Energy Agency] inspections and that the president gave into Indian demands for "Indian-specific" inspections that would fall far short of the normal, full-scope inspections originally sought. Worse, Indian officials have made clear that India alone will decide which future reactors will be kept in the military category and exempt from any safeguards.
The deal endorses and assists India's nuclear weapons program. US-supplied uranium fuel would free up India's limited uranium reserves for fuel that would be burned in these reactors to make nuclear weapons. This would allow India to increase its production from the estimated 6 to 10 additional nuclear bombs per year to several dozen per year.
Then, Cirincione described how the deal may spread nukes throughout the region:
In addition to breaking U.S. law and shattering long-standing barriers to proliferation, lawmakers are concerned about the example the nuclear weapons deal sets for other nations.
The lesson Iran is likely to draw is simple: if you hold out long enough, the Americans will cave. All this talk about violating treaties, they will reason, is just smoke. When the Americans think you are important enough, they will break the rules to accommodate you.
Pakistani officials have already said they expect Pakistan to receive a similar deal, and Israel is surely waiting in the wings. Other nations may decide that they can break the rules, too, to grant special deals to their friends.
China is already rumored to be seeking a deal to provide open nuclear assistance to Pakistan--a practice it stopped in the early 1990s after a successful diplomatic campaign by the United States to bring China into conformity with the Non-Proliferation Treaty restrictions. Will Russia decide that it can make an exception for Iran?...
...Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) says, "America cannot credibly preach nuclear temperance from a barstool. We can't tell Iran, a country that has signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, that they can't have [uranium] enrichment technologies while simultaneously carving out a special exemption from nuclear proliferation laws for India, a nation that has refused to sign the treaty."
Markey's comments leave out two key things.
One, the Bushies spit on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Because they hate the UN, they hate treaties, they hate anything that constrains their neoconservative agenda. Our UN Ambassador John Bolton was actively undermining the treaty last year, and yesterday, he essentially praised India and Pakistan for not signing it.
Two, the Bushies have also said they aren't really trying to stop Iran from getting a nuke. Their goal is regime change before that happens.
So the deal with India, further undermining the treaty, is fully in line with the Bush agenda.
However, there appears to be a chance that congresspeople from both parties will block the deal (though putting any faith in the GOP to buck Bush is always a dubious prospect).
Cirincione sizes up the political landscape:
Republicans and Democrats in Congress are deeply concerned about the deal and the way it was crafted.
Keeping with the administration's penchant for secrecy, the deal was cooked by a handful of senior officials (one of whom is now a lobbyist for the Indian government) and never reviewed by the Departments of State, Defense or Energy before it was announced with a champagne toast by President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Congress was never consulted. Republican committee staff say the first members heard about it was when the fax announcing the deal came into their offices.
Worse, for the president, this appears to be another give away to a foreign government at the expense of U.S. national security interests...
...Lawmakers loyal to President Bush are already signaling tough times ahead for this deal...This looming Congressional battle will pit the proliferation fighters against the nuclear lobby and the increasingly powerful India lobby.
Companies and countries (including France, Canada and Russia) are lining up to sell fuel and reactors to India. They will be joined by the neoconservatives who seek to construct an anti-China alliance. For them, as one architect of the India deal reportedly said, "The problem is not that India has too many nuclear weapons, it is that they do not have enough."
This isn't as simple or as flashy an issue as the port deal, but if we have a shot of blocking it, it's worth trying to make some noise about it.
Cross-posted from LiberalOasis